USA > New Hampshire > Coos County > Incidents in White mountain history, fourth > Part 10
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beaten in the conflict, and exhibit just the marks of violence he did on his person.
There is another thing in this conjecture, accounting for the manner of the disaster, that is worthy of observation. This makes the rapid and elevated rise of the water about the house as the great reason why the family went back to the foot of the mountain, and there perished. Aside from this theory we might never have thought of such a state of things; and yet, when once presented, we see that it har- monizes perfectly with all the great facts in the case. We need the disclosure of this, indeed, to explain what has always been known in relation to the great disaster. Everything above and below the Notch House seems to point to a high and rapid rise of water there. In Conway, where I lived, twenty-five miles below this house, the water, on the night of the disaster, rose twenty-four feet in about seven hours. The Saco was forded about nine o'clock on the evening of that night, and, by daylight the next morning, its waters, as far down in their course as Bartlett and Conway, had risen, by exact admeasurement, twenty-four feet, as we have said, covering all the intervals, in those towns, on both sides of its usual channel. It is reasonable, then, to infer that there must have been a high and rapid rise of water at its source near the Notch House. And, besides this, all the mountains in the region of the Notch and Notch House indicated the pour- ing out of such torrents of rain from the clouds on their peaks and sides, as must have produced a great flood of water in those places. Slides on a mountain, produced by a common rain, generally begin slightly, at their summits, and increase as they go down; but here, from the very summits, the earth and rocks were driven down, as if some immense cistern had been emptied at once upon them. The great idea in
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reference to this seems to be, that before, the great storm came on in its strength and force, ample preparations had been made for it. We have already referred to this fact.
All the day previous to its commencement at nightfall, and even before that, for days, lighter clouds had been col- lecting; but all that day, especially, heavy, dark clouds, surcharged with water, were seen sailing up from the south, in close succession, and resting on the White Mountains.
With all this resource of clouds thus collected and embod- ied on such a spot, it was only necessary to compress them, and then would come a tempest in its strength. The maga- zine was ready - touch it, and it would pour out water enough to deluge all the region beneath it. This, from observation, seemed to be just the effect of the storm through all the great ravines from the Notch down below the Notch House. Pass down or up through all the length of that great ravine, and, under your feet and on either side of you, all that distance, you would see the very effect on mountain and plain, such as would come if great bodies of water were poured on them at once. Excavations in the hard earth were made so deep, large rocks were moved so far, stone and wooden bridges were so upturned, as to convince you, beyond a doubt, a deluge of water, far beyond what was ordinary, had been in their midst.
The above theories are undoubtedly the only ones that can be presented to point out the manner by which the family perished. Beyond these we cannot possibly conceive of an- other by which the great event could transpire; and which of these was the one expressing the real mode of it, we do not wish, even, to give our opinion. With the main facts before the eye of the reader, such as we have drawn out at some length, we had much rather he should decide for himself which is most probable. In the absence of certain knowledge, it is
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most likely that different persons may come to different con- clusions respecting it. Where there is nothing but conjec- ture to guide any one in making up an opinion, certainly no one will be holden precisely to that of another. Every one for himself will make up the judgment he may think the great facts in the case shall best warrant. But, after all, the mere manner in which the family were destroyed is not the great thing. There are things enough known respecting it to give it a strong claim on our attention. We know the family perished ; and we know the circumstances of their death must have been distressing beyond description. Bring them, for a moment, before your imagination. The avalanche, which only two months before had nearly caused their instanta- neous death, if it had not induced timidity, must have greatly increased their sensibility to danger, and filled them with ominous forebodings when this new war of elements began. Add to this the horror of thick darkness that surrounded their dwelling; the tempest raging with unbridled violence ; the bursting thunder, peal answering to peal, and echoing from mountain to mountain with solemn reverberation; the piercing lightning, whose momentary flashes only rendered the darkness and their danger the more painfully visible ; huge masses of the mountain tumbling from their awful height, with accumulating and crashing ruins into the abyss below ; their habitation shaken to its foundation by these concussions of nature ; - with all these circumstances of terror conspiring, what consternation must have filled the soul ! And then, the critical instant when the crashing of the stable, by the resist- less mass, warned them to flee, if we adopt the first theory respecting the manner of the disaster ; or, if we adopt the last, when, amidst the very enginery of death all about them, as they went back to the foot of the mountain, every moment
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expecting to perish by lightning, or moving rocks and tim- bers that swept the face of both mountain and plain like a destroying besom; who can enter into their feelings at such a crisis of the wildest uproar and confusion ? It is im- possible for any one now living, or any one who lived at the time of this destruction, to sympathize at all with the ago- nies of spirit that filled them to the surfeit. We may task our imagination to the highest point possible within our power, and we could not do it. We may strain our conception of mental horror and impressions of soul that might come upon us under the most startling forms of impending death, and, after all, we should fail entirely of coming to the dreadful reality. We may combine our deepest conceptions of what is dreadful in a moment of imminent death, with the most vivid descriptions, from books or friends, of what others have felt as they stood trembling on the verge of ruin, and still we could not comprehend what was felt by the family of my brother, when they went out from their dwelling on the terri- ble night of their destruction, and not only trembled under apprehension of death, but met it and realized it under one of its severest forms.
The best conception which any one could have of what was suffered by the family, on the eve of their destruction, was realized by a family which, for a time, occupied the same house from which they perished.
For the same reason that my brother and his family moved into the house, another man, named Pendexter, with his fam- ily, moved into the same house, more than a year after the terrible disaster. His object was mainly to afford entertain- ment for travellers during the winter ; as, during that season, it was more needed in that spot than during the other sea- sons of the year. Some time after his removal, a heavy
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storm took place. It was not so severe as the one that destroyed my brother's family, but still it was severe enough to give one some pretty clear conception of the force of that. The same general movements, probably, transpired in the lat- ter storm, that did in the first, though not so great in degree. During the progress of this, there were successive cvents of a most awe-inspiring character. At one time would be seen the sharpest lightning followed by the heaviest thunder ; then would be seen streams, arising from the concussion of rocks on the face of the mountain opposite the Notch House, ascending from the base to the very summit, lighting all the valley about with a brilliant light. At the same time, the noise from the concussions would reverberate strong enough to drown the heaviest thunder. All the time, too, these lights were shining, and the peals of heavy thunder were alternating with concussions of rocks on the mountain sides such as to make the very earth tremble under your feet, the rain was pouring in deafening torrents. These impressive circum- stances of the storm, together with reflections of what passed in the same house months before, so affected the then resident family, that not a word was spoken for near half an hour. They stood and looked at each other, almost petrified with fear. And yet, this storm, as we have intimated, was very much inferior in power to the one we have been considering, and which brought on the great disaster that has occupied so much of our attention.
In closing this whole account of one of the most terrible storms ever transpiring, we cannot do it better, perhaps, than in the words of Byron :
" The sky is changed ! and such a change ! O night, And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong !
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Far along,
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, Leaps the live thunder ! Not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue, And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud.
Now, where the quick Rhone thus has cleft his way, The mightiest of the storms hath ta'en his stand ; For here, not one, but many, make their play, And fling their thunderbolts from hand to hand, Flashing and cast around ; of all the band, The brightest through these parted hills hath forked His lightnings, - as if he did understand,
That, in such gaps as desolation worked,
There the hot shaft should blast whatever therein lurked."
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CHAPTER X.
THE SLIDES, CONCLUDED.
THE STORM AS WITNESSED BY ONE AT THE MOUNTAINS. - THE VIEW FROM BETHLEHEM. - RAPID RISE OF THE AMMONOOSUC. - CONDITION OF CAPTAIN ROSEBROOK'S FARM. - SLIDES AS FIRST SEEN. - FALLS OF THE AMMO- NOOSUC. - DIFFICULTY OF REACHING CRAWFORD'S. - ATTEMPT TO ASCEND THE MOUNTAINS. - THE CAMP. - GREAT DESTRUCTION OF TREES.
OUR account of this remarkable storm and its effects would be very imperfect were we to omit the following, written by a gentleman who was on the spot directly after the storm had passed :
" The rains had been falling nearly three weeks, over the southern parts of New England, before they reached the neighborhood of the White Mountains. At the close of a stormy day the clouds all seemed to come together, as to a resting-place, on these lofty summits; and, having retained their chief treasure till now, at midnight discharged them in one terrible burst of rain, the effects of which were awful and disastrous. The storm continued most of the night; but the next morning was clear and serene. The view from the hill of Bethlehem was extensive and delightful. In the eastern horizon Mount Washington, with the neighboring peaks on the north and on the south, formed a grand outline far up in the blue sky. Two or three small fleecy clouds
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rested on its side, a little below its summit ; while, from behind this highest point of land in the United States, east of the Mississippi, the sun rolled up rejoicing in his strength and glory. We started off towards the object of our journey, with spirits greatly exhilarated by the beauty and grandeur of our prospect. As we hastened forward with our eyes fixed on the tops of the mountains before us, little did we think of the scene of destruction around their base, on which the sun was now for the first time beginning to shine. In about half an hour we entered a wilderness, in which we were struck with its universal stillness. From every leaf in its immense masses of foliage the rain hung in large glittering drops ; and the silver note of a single unseen and unknown bird was the only sound that we could hear. After we had proceeded a mile or two, the roaring of the Ammonoosuc began to break upon the stillness, and now grew so loud as to excite our surprise. In consequence of coming to the river almost at right angles, and by a very narrow road, through trees and bushes very thick, we had no view of the water, till with a quick trot we had advanced upon the bridge too far to retreat, when the sight that opened at once to the right hand and to the left drew from all of us similar excla- mations of astonishment and terror; and we hurried over the trembling fabric as fast as possible. After finding our- selves safe on the other side, we walked down to the brink ; and, though familiar with mountain scenery, we all confessed we had never seen a mountain torrent before. The water was as thick with earth as it could be without being changed into mud. A man living near in a log hut showed us how high it was at daybreak. Though it had fallen six feet, he assured us it was ten feet above its ordinary level. To this add its ordinary depth of three or four feet, and here at day-
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break was a body of water, twenty feet deep and sixty feet wide, moving with the rapidity of a gale of wind between steep banks covered with hemlocks and pines, and over a bed of large rocks, breaking its surface into billows like those of the ocean. After gazing a few moments on this sublime sight, we proceeded on our way, for the most part at some distance from the river, till we came to the farm of Rose- brook, lying on its banks. We found his fields covered with water, and sand, and flood-wood. His fences and bridges were all swept away, and the road was so blocked up with logs that we had to wait for the labor of men and oxen before we could get to his house. Here we were told that the river was never before known to bring down any con- siderable quantity of earth; and were pointed to bare spots, on the sides of the White Mountains, never seen till that morning. As our road, for the remaining six miles, lay quite near the river, and crossed many small tributary streams, we employed a man to accompany us with an axe We were frequently obliged to remove trees from the road, to fill excavations, to mend and make bridges, or contrive to get our horses and wagon along separately. After toiling in this manner half a day, we reached the end of our journey ; not, however, without being obliged to leave our wagon half a mile behind. In many places, in those six miles, the road and the whole adjacent woods, as it appeared from the marks on the trees, had been overflowed to the depth of ten feet. In one place, the river, in consequence of some obstruction at a remarkable fall, had been twenty feet higher than it was when we passed. We stopped to view the fall, which Dr. Dwight calls 'beautiful.' He says of it, 'The descent is from fifty to sixty feet, cut through a mass of stratified granite ; the sides of which appear as if they had been laid by a mason
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in a variety of fantastical forms; betraying, however, by their rude and wild aspect, the masterly hand of nature.' This description is sufficiently correct ; but the beauty of the fall was now lost in its sublimity. You have only to imagine the whole body of the Ammonoosuc, as it appeared at the bridge which we crossed, now compressed to half of its width, and sent downward, at an angle of twenty or twenty-five degrees, between perpendicular walls of stone. On our arrival at Crawford's, the appearance of his farm was like that of Rosebrook's, only much worse. Some of his sheep and cattle were lost, and eight hundred bushels of oats were de- stroyed. Here we found five gentlemen, who gave us an interesting account of their unsuccessful attempt to ascend Mount Washington the preceding day. They went to the ' Camp' at the foot of the mountain on Sabbath evening, and lodged there with the intention of climbing the summit the next morning. But in the morning the mountains were en- veloped in thick clouds ; the rain began to fall, and increased till afternoon, when it came down in torrents. At five o'clock they proposed to spend another night at the camp, and let their guide return home for a fresh supply of pro- visions for the next day. But the impossibility of keeping a fire where everything was so wet, and, at length, the advice of their guide, made them all conclude to return, though with great reluctance. No time was now to be lost, for they had several miles to travel on foot, and six of them by a rugged path through a gloomy forest. They ran as fast as their circumstances would permit ; but the dark evergreens around them, and the black clouds above, made it night before they had gone half of the way. The rain poured down faster every moment; and the little streams, which they had stepped across the evening before, must now be crossed by
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wading, or by cutting down trees for bridges, to which they were obliged to cling for life. In this way they reached the bridge over the Ammonoosuc, near Crawford's, just in time to pass it before it was carried down the current. On Wednes- day, the weather being clear and beautiful, and the waters having subsided, six gentlemen, with a guide, went to Mount Washington, and one accompanied Mr. Crawford to the 'Notch,' from which nothing had yet been heard. We met again at evening, and related to each other what we had seen. The party who went to the mountain were five hours in reaching the site of the camp, instead of three, the usual time. The path for nearly one third of the distance was so much excavated, or covered with miry sand, or blocked up with flood-wood, that they were obliged to grope their way through thickets almost impenetrable, where one generation of trees after another had risen and fallen, and were now lying across each other in every direction, and in various stages of decay. The camp itself had been wholly swept away; and the bed of the rivulet by which it had stood was now more than ten rods wide, and with banks from ten to fifteen feet high. Four or five other brooks were passed, whose beds were enlarged, some of them to twice the extent of this. In several the water was now only three or four feet wide, while the bed, of ten, fifteen, or twenty rods in width, was covered for miles with stones, from two to five feet in diameter, that had been rolled down the mountain and through the forests by thousands, bearing everything before them. Not a tree, nor the root of a tree, remained in their path. Immense piles of hemlocks and other trees, with their limbs and bark entirely bruised off, were lodged all the way on both sides, as they had been driven in among the standing and half-standing trees on the banks. While the party were
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climbing the mountain, thirty 'slides' were counted, some of which began where the soil and vegetation terminate ; and, growing wider as they descended, were estimated to contain more than a hundred acres. These were all on the western side of the mountains. They were composed of the whole surface of the earth, with all its growth of woods, and its loose rocks, to the depth of fifteen, twenty, and thirty feet ; and wherever the slides of the projecting mountains met, and formed a vast ravine, the depth was still greater."
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CHAPTER XI.
BARTLETT.
GENERAL FEATURES. - ROCKY BRANCH. - INCIDENT ON ITS BANK. - INCI- DENTS OF ELLIS' RIVER. - FIRST SETTLEMENT. - LOSS OF THE HORSES. - SNOW CAVERNS. - BROTHERS EMERY. - HUMPHREY'S OBSTINACY. - THEIR PERILOUS ESCAPE FROM FREEZING .- HON. JOHN PENDEXTER. - HIS REMOVAL FROM PORTSMOUTH. - CHILDREN. - "RAISING " SCENE. - MRS. PENDEXTER. - THE GREAT DISTANCE OF A MARKET. - DIFFICULTY OF REACHING MARKET. -TRAPS FOR CATCHING WILD ANIMALS. - THE COMMON LOG TRAP. - FIGURE FOUR. - PEQUAWKET MOUNTAIN. - ADVENTURE WITH A RATTLE- SNAKE. - THE "CHAPEL OF THE HILLS." - MRS. SNOW. - ITS DEDICATION.
" Go, call thy sons ; instruct them what a debt They owe their ancestors ; and make them swear To pay it, by transmitting down entire Those sacred rights to which themselves were born."
BARTLETT is a small, irregular-shaped town, lying near the White Mountains, having Jackson on the north and Conway on the south. Saco river runs through it, in a circling course, making almost a semicircle within its limits. On both sides of this river, through all its course in the town, is good land, to some extent from its banks ; and that is about all the good land the town affords. You soon come to the mountains, after you leave this stretch of land, which generally corre- spond with the course of the river in the direction of their
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ranges. None of these mountains are so large as to claim any particular notice.
Rocky Branch, a stream tributary to the Saco, empties into it near the centre of the town. It runs with a rapid current, most of the way from its starting, over a rocky bed, as its name indicates, till it mingles with its confluent stream. It rises very rapidly in times of great rains, as do most other streams in the region. At the time of the great disas- ter near the Notch, when my brother's family were destroyed, it was the scene of a most thrilling incident.
Previous to this time, near down to where it flows into the Saco, on a spot of level, smooth land, familiarly called Jericho, a man by the name of Emery had built a small log cabin, and moved his family into it. In the night, the same on which the great disaster occurred on the Saco, this stream, in the vehemence of its rapid, high-swollen current, brought down so many trees, and rocks, and logs, from the land along its banks, that it formed a sort of dam just below the spot on which the cabin stood. This made a pond of water, which started the cabin from its foundation, and buoyed it up on its surface like a boat. Here the family were, in the depth of a dark stormy night, with the water roaring in their ears, at the mercy of an angry flood. Their feelings in this situation can much better be imagined than expressed. They did the best they could, went into the highest part of the cabin, and there awaited the fearful issue. They expected every instant to be engulfed in the waters. For long hours, with little to be scen, but almost everything dreadful to be heard, they held death steadily before them. Their prospect of escape, under the circumstances, was the frailest imaginable. But they survived the peril. The waters at last subsided, their little ark rested on a miniature Ararat, and the family escaped to
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the mountains. For deep tragic interest this holds a place next in order to the great Notch disaster itself.
A little to the east of Rocky Branch river is another, called Ellis river, running about in the same direction from the White Mountains and emptying likewise into the Saco. This, in its general character, is very much like the preceding, rapid in its current, and very much affected in its rising by heavy rains. On the same night in which the incident oc- curred we have just recited, another took place on this river, showing the sudden and high rise of water on all the streams among the mountains at that time. Near its course up in Jackson, through which it flows on its way to Bartlett from its origin in the mountains, a man had a yard, into which he had collected some colts, to keep through the night. During that night, the river, rising near the yard, rose so high, that, flowing over its banks, it swept all the colts out of it, and carried some of them a longer distance down its current, and some a shorter one. They were all destroyed, however ; some of their bodies, mangled by the rocks and roots lying along in the rough bed of the stream, went down as far as Bartlett, a distance of miles.
Bartlett was originally granted to William Stark, Vere Royce, and others, in consideration of services rendered by them during the French and Indian war in Canada. Capt. Stark immediately divided up his grant into lots, offering large tracts to any one who would settle on them. Two brothers Emery, and one Harriman, were among the first who located themselves permanently in the town. Settle- ments had been commenced at this time in most of the towns surrounding the mountains. In 1777, but a few years suc- ceeding the Emerys, Daniel Fox, Paul Jilly and Capt. Samuel Willey, from Lec, made a settlement in Upper Bart-
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lett, north of those already located. They commenced their settlement with misfortunes as well as hardships. Their horses, which they had brought with them, dissatisfied with the rich grazing land on the Saco, started for their former home in Lee. As it afterwards appeared, instead of following the Saco in all its turnings and windings, as the settlers did, the horses struck directly across the mountains to the south. On the first mountain they separated, some going further to the east and others to the west. This was all learned long after the loss. Diligent search was made at the time, but to no purpose. In the spring following the disappearance of the horses, some dogs brought into the settlement the legs and other parts of a horse. Suspecting that they might be parts of those they had lost, they followed the track of the dogs, and only about sixty rods from the settlement came upon the carcass of one. The horse had evidently been dead but a few weeks. He had sustained himself, it appeared, during the winter on browse, being protected from the cold by those immense snow-caverns which are frequently formed on the mountains. The snow had formed an entire roof over the tops of the thickly-matted trees, leaving the space beneath completely free and hollow. In one of these snow-houses the horse had lived all the winter. Flocks of sheep have been known to be protected so from the cold, coming out healthy and in good condition in the spring.
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